richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

156 THE GOD DELUSION
maybe the elusive crane that cosmologists seek will be a version of
Darwin's idea itself: either Smolin's model or something similar. Or
maybe it will be the multiverse plus anthropic principle espoused by
Martin Rees and others. It may even be a superhuman designer -
but, if so, it will most certainly not be a designer who just popped
into existence, or who always existed. If (which I don't believe for
a moment) our universe was designed, and a fortiori if the designer
reads our thoughts and hands out omniscient advice, forgiveness and
redemption, the designer himself must be the end product of some
kind of cumulative escalator or crane, perhaps a version of
Darwinism in another universe.
The last-ditch defence by my critics in Cambridge was attack.
My whole world-view was condemned as 'nineteenth-century'. This
is such a bad argument that I almost omitted to mention it. But
regrettably I encounter it rather frequently. Needless to say, to call
an argument nineteenth-century is not the same as explaining what
is wrong with it. Some nineteenth-century ideas were very good
ideas, not least Darwin's own dangerous idea. In any case, this particular
piece of namecalling seemed a bit rich coming, as it did,
from an individual (a distinguished Cambridge geologist, surely
well advanced along the Faustian road to a future Templeton Prize)
who justified his own Christian belief by invoking what he called
the historicity of the New Testament. It was precisely in the
nineteenth century that theologians, especially in Germany, called
into grave doubt that alleged historicity, using the evidence-based
methods of history to do so. This was, indeed, swiftly pointed out
by the theologians at the Cambridge conference.
In any case, I know the 'nineteenth-century' taunt of old. It goes
with the 'village atheist' gibe. It goes with 'Contrary to what you
seem to think Ha Ha Ha we don't believe in an old man with a long
white beard any more Ha Ha Ha.' All three jokes are code for
something else, just as, when I lived in America in the late 1960s,
'law and order' was politicians' code for anti-black prejudice.*
What, then, is the coded meaning of 'You are so nineteenth-century'
in the context of an argument about religion? It is code for: 'You
are so crude and unsubtle, how could you be so insensitive and illmannered
as to ask me a direct, point-blank question like "Do you
believe in miracles?" or "Do you believe Jesus was born of a
* In Britain 'inner cities' had the equivalent coded meaning, prompting Auberon
Waugh's wickedly hilarious reference to 'inner cities of both sexes'.